Friday, May 23, 2008

Phoenix Special > Through the Eyes of the Phoenix Competition > The Results!

Surprise!

The Through the Eyes of the Phoenix Competition, organized by spacEurope in association with the mission's Education & Public Outreach program, has reached the final results! And we are here to reveal them one day before the predicted!

The members of the jury, spacEurope’s crew members Stuart Atkinson, Nicholas Previsich, Lewis Dartnell and myself, the fantastic Carla Bitter, Mission's Education & Public Outreach Manager, and her E/PO team (without who this would not be possible…) and our dear Mark Lemmon, Phoenix Co-Investigator, SSI Lead, coming from continental Europe, England and the New World have expressed their preferences and, after a really tight race, arrived a conclusion and here we are to announce the winners.

As you might have been aware of, spacEurope had invited also kids under 12 to participate with their own entries…Well…it seems like you guys weren’t able to get the playstation out of their hands…Shame on you! ;-)There wasn’t a single participation in that category so I have thought about a solution for the prizes destined to the sub12s and contacted the others elements of the jury revealing my intention which had no opposing from their side.So, what will be those prizes destiny?Three different institutions:-The elementary school where I have studied;-The elementary school from my town;-The Ciência Viva Centre from Sintra.

The objective of this decision is to put Phoenix under the spotlight of the new generations, trying to get youngsters interested in such an important step in our path towards Mars.And who knows if this won’t influence one of the students to look above, start formulating questions and pursue answers through her/his life? That would be a priceless retribution…

To all of you who participated let me express, in the name of the jury, how grateful we are for seing you put your imagination working, trying to figure out how will a never seen scenario look like.Now that we are only 48 hours from Mars, 48 hours from seing the real stuff unravelling before our eyes, let us see where your art has taken us.It was indeed a pleasure receiving your entries.Thank you!

Now let me just shut up and reveal the jury’s result:In the third place, coming from Portugal…José Amaral and his Polar devil!

Coming in second…and really close to the first classified…An untitled landscape created by…Brian Cameron, Oxford, UK!

And now…

The winner of spacEurope-Phoenix Education & Public Outreach Through the Eyes of the Phoenix Competition is…

Sound the trumpets!

Mr. Doug Ellison from Leicester, United Kingdom with is So few rocks fantastic interpretation of Phoenix Mars Lander landing site!

Congratulations to the winners who, besides receiving the correspondent cool prizes, will also see their works published in the official website of Phoenix mission!

To all the others competitors, no, you were not forgotten, once more, thank you for participating and I count with you in future opportunities.As promised, here are your entries, inspiring as they are, close as they were from being one of the three winners, they deserve to be shared with all the readers (click each image to enlarge):